Like everything else that was actually really important right then, I pushed this information to the back of my mind and concentrated on getting through the tour. Four days before the tour started with two nights at Dublin’s huge RDS Hall, the band had been presented with the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. I wasn’t sure if this was one of those things they give you when you’re about to bow out, as we were. But then I checked and saw that Eric Clapton had won the same award back in 1971 and felt better about it. John Lennon had been given the award as far back as 1964. Suitably convinced it wasn’t some sort of dinosaur award, I went to the gents and treated myself to another thoroughly well-deserved line or two (or three).
And that’s just about the last thing I can honestly remember of our End of the Road tour, except for flying away in the helicopter after ‘Quo’s Last Show’ at Milton Keynes, glad that it was finally all over. I had taken so much coke, it wasn’t exactly the finest performance to go out on.
In fact, it was pathetic. And if you look at the footage that was later released as a longform video, simply titled Status Quo – End of the Road ’84 – it’s so doctored to make me look better it’s sickening. Lots of shots of helicopters flying overhead and my vocals clearly overdubbed later. I haven’t watched it in years. Actually, I don’t think I could ever bring myself to watch the whole thing even when it first came out. But when I snuck a little peek at a clip of it the other day, the thing that really struck me was how unhappy Rick looks. He looks angry, baffled, sad, utterly fed up. You might be able to find a shot of him somewhere faking a little smile on the video, but to me he looks completely done in. Later, he told me he couldn’t believe what was going on. That this was really the end. But for me, I couldn’t wait for it to end. I’m told that Bob Young came and made a special guest appearance, blowing away on the harp for ‘Roadhouse Blues’, but I honestly can’t remember it.
After the show there was no big party or anything. We had had one of those after the seventh and final night at the Hammersmith Odeon a few weeks before. It was held at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea’s football ground. It was our official farewell party and the place was absolutely packed with people, many of whom I had no idea who they were. Those I did recognise included genuine old pals like Brian May and Roger Taylor from Queen, Lemmy from Motörhead, Denny Laine from Wings, Rick Wakeman from Yes and John Entwistle from the Who, to name just a few of the famous friends I still don’t remember talking to.
Again, I’m pretty sure I spent the night in a private side room, lavishing time on my real best friend, Mr Cocaine, and his good lady, Miss Tequila. I don’t think I had properly slept for about three months at that point. I mean my eyes would close, but my brain would not switch off, and my mouth would not stop moving, my whole body on fire. I would get really ill from all the coke I was doing. Then say to myself: God, I feel so bad. What I need is a line of toot to sort me out. Then, feeling good again, I would think: You know what, I feel better now. I’ll have another line to celebrate.
Remarkably – foolishly, perhaps – Liz stuck with me through all of this. Liz had never been a prude. She had been in the business for long enough to wear the T-shirt. One of the reasons I fell so hard for her in the first place was that she could hold her own when it came to late-night partying. Except now she was pregnant and had more to think about than just making sure I didn’t choke on my own vomit. She certainly couldn’t be involved with drugs. Bless her heart, Liz stayed on that tour with me as long as she could, her bump getting bigger every day. But what were once her band duties had rapidly thinned out to simply keeping a weather eye on me. Then towards the end she had to go home – the baby was coming.
For a while, I think we both thought this was it. That we had found our true soulmates and that we would stay together. Especially so after Liz gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, just two weeks after that final awful Milton Keynes show. She named her Bernadette. Only one snag: with three children already, for me the novelty wore off pretty quick. I loved the idea of having a daughter. I definitely hadn’t had one of them before. And at first we were all ecstatically happy together, either at The Glade or at the place in Ireland. But we were also spending more time apart. While Liz had ostensibly been working for me and the band, there was never any reason to be apart. But with the band all but finished and a beautiful baby girl to look after now, Liz rightly decided she needed to make that her priority. In truth, I think she welcomed having those breaks away from me. I was a full-time wreck, far more demanding than any baby. Also, my mother, who was becoming more manic and religious by the day, had scared Liz off. Meanwhile, I had started to find other ways of keeping myself happy now I didn’t have a full-time band to worry about.
I recorded one last single with Quo, a fairly rote version of ‘The Wanderer’, which went to number 7. And the label stuck out another best-of compilation, 12 Gold Bars Volume II, which comprised our eighties hits and also went top 10. But that was the final turning point for me and by Christmas 1984 it was basically all over and I wasn’t bothering to hide it from the rest of the guys any more. It’s fair to say there was a lot of bitterness on both sides. For me, it was like escaping from prison. For Rick and Alan, it was an act of betrayal on my part. I was sorry that Rick felt that way but less concerned about Alan, who I’d thoroughly had enough of.
The issues in my relationship with Alan went back all through the band’s career. Some of it was the sort of stuff that all bands have to deal with. Brian Jones always thought of the Rolling Stones as his band, even after Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had written a dozen major hits for them and Brian had been fired. Roger Daltrey to this day still sees the Who as really his band, even though Pete Townshend wrote all their hits. Ronnie Lane saw the Faces as his group, even though the rest of the world saw them as Rod Stewart’s backing group. I’m not saying any of this is fair, or not. I’m pointing out that the whole I’m-the-leader thing causes more problems than it ever solves. As Rick and I were about to discover, it doesn’t matter two hoots what you think, it’s what the public thinks that ultimately matters.
With Alan, though, there was always more to it than that when it came to our personal relationship. We were always two very different people. One of the reasons I liked him so much as a kid was how full-on and aggressive he could be. How he didn’t take shit from anybody, even if he was only half their size. But, as I grew up, that became one of the reasons I started to dislike him. He was immoveable, wouldn’t give an inch on anything. He was always right, no matter what. Now, in my mid-thirties, I found the whole thing too overwhelming to deal with. I wanted to push the music into new and more interesting directions – the very thing the critics had always accused Quo of being too thick to even attempt. I didn’t want to tear up the script and rewrite history. I loved our music. I just wanted it to develop a little more. Times were changing and I didn’t want to get left behind. To me, Alan was the biggest obstacle to that happening. And I simply wasn’t prepared to live with that fact any longer. To the point where I was now ready to destroy the whole thing if necessary.
As for Rick, that was obviously a different story. We had first become friends as teenagers. Then forged an onstage partnership that was the equal to any in rock. Some nights it felt almost telepathic between us onstage. We had become two sides of the same coin. Yin and Yang; sun and moon. When it worked it was like a well-oiled machine. You couldn’t see the cogs moving, you just felt the heat. I knew I would never enjoy that kind of musical relationship again with anyone else. But Ricky would be the first to admit he was very high maintenance. I am aware, of course, of how pot-calling-the-kettle-black that statement is. Lost as I was, though, in my personal fuck-ups and misadventures, I just couldn’t take on Rick’s problems too any more. I barely had time for Liz or my new baby daughter. Didn’t spend enough time with my three older boys by Jean. And on some level I was painfully aware of all these things even as I was doing them. Ultimately, when I look back now, I se
e that as probably the real reason why I needed to create some space away from the band: I needed to make a run for it. Like all hopeless addicts, rather than stay and deal with my problems, I thought getting away as far as possible as I could from the whole mess was the way to deal with it. But as I was soon to discover, no matter how far you run, you always bring yourself.
That day of reckoning was still some way off, though, as I contemplated a life after Quo. Even when Alan contacted me to tell me he and Rick were seriously talking about doing a band called Quo 2, I just shrugged my shoulders. I knew it was possible. AC/DC had gone on to even greater success after their original singer Bon Scott had died in 1980 and they brought in Brian Johnson to replace him. On paper, that shouldn’t have worked at all. The band had put out several chart albums with Bon. He utterly embodied the AC/DC personality and spirit. Brian had been the singer in Geordie, who’d enjoyed a couple of chart singles in the days when we were also breaking through with ‘Paper Plane’. How could he possibly hope to replace Bon? Well, he not only replaced him, he helped take the band to even greater levels of success.
Van Halen, who in 1984 were the biggest-selling rock band in the world, were about to see their singer, David Lee Roth, launch his own highly successful solo career. They replaced him with Sammy Hagar, a great singer in his late thirties who I always got on well with but who’d only previously had one hit – and saw Van Halen become bigger than ever.
So I knew full well that if the boys chose the right frontman they could easily keep Quo going without me. I didn’t care. Not one bit. Go for it, my son.
If anything, this just spurred me on to begin building a solo career of my own. As I saw it, my working relationship with Bernie Frost had already proved it could be successful by providing Quo with some of its biggest recent hits like ‘What You’re Proposing’, ‘Rock ’n’ Roll’ and, of course, my beloved ‘Marguerita Time’. I saw the musical partnership with Bernie as the ace up my sleeve. Not having been in Quo, and not coming from the same south London backdrop as me, Rick and Alan, he had a totally fresh perspective on things. Unlike Bob Young, I also thought that Bernie would be a good foil for me onstage. He didn’t have any musical past to hang onto, or any cares about who was calling the shots career wise. He was just this incredibly talented singer-songwriter who also happened to be the nicest bloke you could hope to spend time with, which also fitted in with my not-so-brave new world as it was unfolding in the mid-eighties.
When I had first gone to live in Ireland, staying at Dromoland Castle, in contrast to writing songs with Bob in hotel rooms, between shows, Bernie and I would carry a couple of acoustic guitars out onto the lush green hills and sit there strumming along just for the pleasure of it. Cows would actually wander over to listen to us.
Another time, later into my time in Ireland, we were staying at a hotel in Dublin where there was a little bar called the Coffee Dock. This place virtually never closed, which suited me down to the ground as I was a night owl. Bernie and I would be there with the guitars again, just seeing what we could come up with, without worrying about studio schedules or meeting a tour deadline. It was one of those places where every other musician in Dublin would turn up at all hours. We would always start the session the same way, no matter what time of day or night it was, with the full Irish breakfast: a big fry-up along with a pot of tea. You could smoke indoors in those days and I would sit there, smoking a joint and writing songs with Bernie. It was idyllic. As soon as we had a couple of new songs finished we’d scoot over to the studio and get them onto tape.
Back in Ireland again in those weeks and months after the band had gone its separate ways, I tried to get the same atmosphere going with Bernie. Only this time it wasn’t quite the same as things had changed. Not between me and Bernie, but between me and Liz. After Bernadette was born, obviously Liz was too busy with our daughter to give her big baby – me – all her attention, although she did try, bless her. I was busy, meanwhile, discussing the possibility of my new solo career with the record company. I knew that Rick was also talking to them about a solo deal. The label seemed agreeable and ponied up a new contract for me along with a decent advance. All I needed to do now was get to work with Bernie on a new set of songs.
It seemed almost too good to be true. And you know what they say about when things seem to be too good to be true: it’s usually because they are. Well, that’s what happened now working with Bernie. It wasn’t his fault. It was my fault. Given the freedom suddenly to do whatever I saw fit on an album of my own, I didn’t know where to begin. My only guiding principle was that it shouldn’t sound like a Status Quo album. Big mistake right there. Not wanting it to be something different. But putting too much emphasis on what it should and shouldn’t be before we’d even written the songs. There is only one way to write a good song and that is to almost let the song find you. Don’t try and restrict yourself. Just trust in your own talent and see what comes out. That was how all my best songs came about. Unfortunately, I was still so wrapped up in the fallout from the Quo split that I couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
And of course it didn’t help matters that I would spend most of the day on the phone talking to drug dealers, or arranging to go and pick the drugs up, or actually sitting there doing the drugs. What’s that you say? How about picking up a guitar? How dare you! Can’t you see I’m far too busy getting coked out of my mind?
The coke expenditure was now serious business. Casual cocaine users will buy a gram of coke and make it last perhaps a few days. But there was nothing casual about my coke use. I was now buying it an ounce at a time: twenty-eight grams. That would last me about a week, sometimes less. Or put another way, I was now going through four or five grams of coke a day. Yes, a fair amount of that was going up other people’s noses too. I was not stingy with my coke when working. This was also costing me a fair few bob, as my old dad used to say. Maybe a couple of grand a week, maybe more. In the end, my cocaine bill was more than double that of the advance the record company had given me to make the bloody album.
Apart from the damage this was doing to my body – and, even more importantly, to my mind – the rigmarole of simply getting so much cash together every single week proved to be a nightmare. In today’s money, I was spending around £20– 25,000 on coke every month. This was much more than you could just get out of a cash machine, so I would have to personally go into the bank and draw out the money – a few grand every week. Even though I was that bloke from that pop group, taking this kind of cash out of the bank all the time aroused suspicion. I would have to take two forms of ID, wait for them to check and double-check everything, then stand fidgeting there while they painstakingly counted out the cash. The biggest denomination they had were £50 notes. Sometimes they wouldn’t have enough and I’d have to settle for twenties as well.
Because I was always strung out on coke, feeling the world had its eyes on me, and because whatever bank I happened to be in the eyes of the entire staff and other customers were on me, I found the whole thing an ordeal. I took to driving around looking for branches of the bank I hadn’t been in before, or branches I hadn’t been in for a few weeks. Then, once I’d gotten hold of the cash, I’d drive to whatever coke dealer I was seeing that week, where I would have to endure the other regular ordeal of having to make the trip seem like just a normal visit. Say hi, how are you and would I like a cup of tea? When I didn’t really want to say hi, I just wanted to pick up and leave, couldn’t care less how they were doing and definitely did not want a cup of fucking tea.
I realise this was what these days we would call First World problems. But this is where I was at while I was trying to make an album with Bernie. It’s amazing we ever got anything done but in the end we had eight or ten finished songs, which we parcelled together for a solo album, which we called Flying Debris – and, no, it didn’t sound much like a Quo album, even though I had both Pete Kircher playing drums and Andy Bown on keyboards. There were the occasional echoes – how coul
d there not be on any record where I’m the singer and co-writer? Tracks like ‘That’s All Right’ had that rolling gait that Quo perfected. In the main, though, this was me and Bernie trying something new.
By then, the plan wasn’t even to release it under just my name, but as a joint fifty–fifty collaboration with Bernie. The first single we released from it was ‘Modern Romance (I Want to Fall in Love Again), which came out in May 1985, and got to the dizzy heights of number 56 on the UK charts. The follow-up, ‘Jealousy’, which was catchier, came out in September that year and didn’t even get that high in the charts. This despite performing it with Bernie on Cheggers Plays Pop, Keith Chegwin’s children’s TV game show!
As a result of these less than scintillating chart showings, the release of the Flying Debris album, which had been scheduled for that Christmas, was ‘delayed’ by the record company. Delayed as in shelved. To this day, it’s never been released, although there are poor-quality bootlegs available.
So much for my budding new career as a solo performer. Looking back now, though, I can see the problem. Rather than come across as a shining new star in my own right, I just came across as Quo-lite. If you dig out the clip of me and Bernie on the Cheggers show doing ‘Jealousy’, the problem instantly becomes apparent. There’s me in my blue jeans and waistcoat, same as in Quo, except my hair is now in a ponytail (all the rage at the time). Standing next to me is Bernie, looking … uncomfortable. Who could blame him? He was standing in the same spot that Rick Parfitt used to stand. Only where Rick would be throwing shapes and getting stuck in, Bernie is trying to look cool and not quite pulling it off. I’m also trying to look like I know what I’m doing but I can see that I’m not really comfortable either. I was used to miming on TV, had no problem with it, but with no band there to at least pretend we were live, the whole thing comes across as stilted and … boring. There, I’ve said it. It gives me no pleasure to do so. For my money, Bernie and I came up with some good stuff on that album-that-never-was. But it just wasn’t meant to be. Worst of all, I knew that if I’d done ‘Jealousy’ with Quo, it would have been a hit. Plenty to think about then, as I stared down the barrel of a gun, that Christmas.
I Talk Too Much Page 17
